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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

home sale 101

This whole home sale process has been eye opening. Brandon and I have learned quite a lot. Some of these things will be helpful to the every day reader. Some of these are just lessons we learned the hard way. Here are seven lessons learned about selling your home:1. If you want people to call for a showing, then put the baby down for a nap. This works 100% of the time. It is especially effective when the baby fights the nap for thirty minutes prior to falling asleep. Another good idea - start doing weekly meal prep and have three pots/pans going at one time. This will ensure the phone rings.2. While not particularly helpful to anyone else, we learned that Gemma gets car sick. This is a new development. 2a. As a result of our new knowledge from number 2, we also discovered that Natalie feeds Gemma entirely too much of her lunches/dinners.3. Buy stock in coffee places with a drive-thru. Almost every time we had to leave the house with the baby and dogs in the car, we were sure to stop at a drive-thru coffee place. Quick, easy and totally necessary. By buying stock in a company of that nature, you are sure to make up what you are spending with every visit. This would have been helpful prior to putting our house on the market, but good to know for those thinking about it. 4. If you don't like the drive around approach, sitting in your car and waiting is super entertaining. It was awesome to see who was in our house. It made me feel a little bit better and made the process a little less weird. [Note: I am sure that people thought we were total creeps. I am ok with that.] I hated not knowing who had been in my house and how long they had been in there. Sitting in the car also meant far less time spent out of our house (and not cleaning up dog vomit). During a showing block from 1:30-2:30 we would be gone from 1:15 until at least 2:45. When we sat in the car, we were usually back in our house within 30 minutes.5. People are so incredibly inconsiderate. I was definitely not prepared for this one. On more than one occasion, someone knocked down several of the vertical blinds at the back door and left them on the floor. I can understand not trying to put them back on if you're not familiar with how vertical blinds work (even this is a stretch), but at least pick them up and put them on the kitchen table. People would also just walk through the house with muddy shoes. There is a door mat right by the front door. How hard is common courtesy?! 6. A good realtor makes a world of a difference. We bought our townhouse with Mike so it made sense that we would call him to sell it and to buy our next house. He is wonderful. He was attentive to our emails and texts. He was patient and happily explained and re-explained things when we were only able to half listen because we were chasing Natalie around. And when we signed all of the paperwork, he kept her entertained so that we could sign in peace and savor the moments. If you need a realtor in MD or PA, let me know :)

7. It is stressful. Wine helps. A lot. We only had our house on the market for a little over two weeks and we were so over it. It is an emotionally draining process. It's a good idea to mentally prepare for the process. We put our house up on a whim and I hope we never, ever have to do it again!